Our heroes at long last (eight months realtime) move into the fifth chapter of Rise of the Runelords, “Sins of the Saviors.” We all level, divvy loot, and go back to Sandpoint to be hailed as heroes in Part I! After a booze-and-sex-soaked bout of partying we hear that this Godsforsaken town is beset by a sinkhole and more ominous goings-on. So in went in to smite them, in good humor. We hit the boss first thing out of the gate, and it’s a sword and sorcery fest as we took on two glabrezus and a high ass level caster! And I, our party’s caster, was taken out by a Power Word: Stun from one of the demons. Teamwork prevailed – Roscoe hit me with a Panacea to get rid of the stun; I Dispel Magiced the bad guy and managed to rid him of more than half of his quite considerable array of magical protections; and Yenneck spitted him on his bastard sword in quick 1-2-3 order. You know you’ve arrived when people are pulling out Reverse Gravity on you! And Valgrim is thinking hard about Planar Binding a glabrezu when he hits level 12.

On a side note, Teleport is so, so useful. Goodbye to all these multiple week treks across the continent, as long as I “have the flight path,” so to speak.

In Part II, we go to find the Runeforge, where we hope to learn how and where to thwart Runelord Kharzoug’s return, and bring down the wrath of a white dragon upon us. My fire energon scared him off, but man even my most buff summons really aren’t able to hit much of anything at this level; I need to figure out some way to buff their to-hit more. Vaelyn was very, very happy that my two abishai did Aid Anothers to boost his AC, it made the difference between life and death from a full attack from the dragon. (I’m not sure why to bother using abishai; if I wanted to be real annoying I could just mass-summon level 1 monsters and have them Aiding everyone around them.)

I didn’t like how the AP “hardcodes” the signature sin for caster specialists (each person gets assigned the most relevant sin, since that’s the theme of the dungeon). Valgrim is definitely more about pride than sloth. I did like our interaction with Ordikan the kinda-crazy metal man. I pulled off a huge Bluff to get him to go mess with the mephits so we could swipe all his intel. Some of the party was confused about why I wanted to return his spellbooks to him after, but he hadn’t done anything to us, and as a wizard I know how much time and work is invested in such things… Professional courtesy if nothing else! And the magical pool was more fun than any other magical pool ever! Pools that have totally random and arbitrary effects = lame, but pools that have effects relevant to what you’re doing = cool.

Alas, I missed Part III, being on a well-deserved vacation. But our faithful scribe still got it all down, as the party examined more parts of the Runeforge. Read along, and participate in the burning question – is that a glaive or a ranseur? Wrath and Envy fall before the party’s might!!! (Well technically the Wrathites took out the Envyoids, but no witnesses = all the glory!) And Yenneck’s player finally realizes that success in 3.5e is dependent on having some magic items, and he fills out his Christmas tree, to the rest of the party’s relief.

I returned for Part IV, where we took on the Vaults of Gluttony dungeon. Undead galore. We had a nice party spat when the resident lich found out where the escape from the Runeforge to Golarion was. Some of the party didn’t want to mess with him, but said we should leave him alone and let him go back to the world and do his evil deeds. I, the one everyone looks at as evil because of my demon summoning, was the one to say “I think not!” and fight him, forcing the issue. My two favorite parts – one, living through the lich’s finger of death because of my dwarven +2 on saves vs spells. Truly, being dwarven is like a superpower to humans. And two, using an otherwise worthless musteval guardinal to spot the improved invisible flying lich so my two amnizus could fireball it into a cinder. “I’m sorry, I thought you said it was a ‘lich.’ But it was something else that just rhymes with that.”

In Part V, we took on Lust and Pride! My favorites!!! I bound a Nalfeshnee demon to my will and took him into the Iron Cages of Lust with us, promising him the succubus Delhavine to take back with him to the Abyss. Unfortunately we ended up negotiating with her. But two of her alu-demon “daughters” were KOed by us; we strapped them up with some handy restraints and ball gags (lots of stuff like that around) and he got to keep them instead, so he was happy.

Then we went into the Shimmering Veils of Pride. You’d think that “break the mirror” would be the absolute very first thing anyone would do when faced by a hall full of Mirrors of Opposition that are crapping out duplicates of the party. No, strangely, everyone starts meleeing with the three copies of Ravno instead. I busted one mirror with a summoned centipede and Vaelyn finally got the other. It was a tough fight, hundreds of hit points were dropped by the front line guys.

The four invisible clone-wizards weren’t much of a threat as I got initiative and my summoned Amnizu demons made short work of them with quickened fireballs. Then we got phat lewt – a robe of the archmagi!!!

Our glee was short lived as we went to the central pool with our sin-infused mirror shards and cock sheath (no, really) to enchant our weapons – the statue of Kharzoug attacked us, in true big golem style. I loaned my adamantine hammer to Roscoe and pulled out my anti-golem summon, a sonic energon (xong-yong). 8d6 sonic a round whittles ’em down fast. And with that, we finish Sins of the Saviors! Next, we must locate and travel to the haunted peak of Mar-Massif, upon which lurks the frozen spires of forgotten Xin-Shalast. And in it the shade of the former Runelord of Greed, Kharzoug, who seeks to lurch back to ill-formed life. I will destroy him and take his place as a proper Runelord! Mmmwah hah ha ha haaaaaaaaaaa!